


the seeress loves her brother

by insertcleveracejoke



Category: Leagues and Legends - E. Jade Lomax
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Gen, basically a "what if the seeress loved her brother better", bc I was reading the books again and got emotional, because I love Grey and he deserves everything, enjoy this fanfic, i didnt have the heart to kill anyone, nothing hurts and everything is good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2020-02-28 05:57:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18750403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insertcleveracejoke/pseuds/insertcleveracejoke
Summary: It wasn't a decision so hard in the end."The seeress loves her brother", she whispered to him even when he was just a red, wrinkly little demon that liked to be held by her better than by anyone else. "Cassandra Graves loves her brother. Her brother is a mage."





	the seeress loves her brother

It wasn't a decision so hard in the end.

"The seeress loves her brother", she whispered to him even when he was just a red, wrinkly little demon that liked to be held by her better than by anyone else. "Cassandra Graves loves her brother. Her brother is a mage."

He would whisper it back to her, years later, half lying on her lap after a nightmare. "The mage loves his sister", Sam would mutter, more asleep than awake. "His sister is a seeress."

The seeress knew that damnation tasted like chamomile, knew how the names of the doomed felt on her tongue. She knew she was a monster. Her brother was a different story, and she would see it told.

It started like this. Her father listened to her saying her Nurse glowed, and then let her watch as her sin allowed the guards to drag her away.

It started like this. Long, long ago, she had first opened golden eyes that would eventually fade into obsidian.

It started, perhaps, like this: Her brother was born, and her world was filled with golden light.

"Don't do this", the seeress had told him, holding hands that were always a sigh away from tearing into the fabric of the world, "not in front of anyone who isn't me, and not in front of Father."

She was damned. Every day of her life, she would carry that on her shoulders- the lives she had enabled them to take. She was damned. But her brother wasn't, and she refused to believe that those grey eyes were as monstrous as hers, those eyes that looked up at her for protection, for safety, for love. The seeress loves her brother. Her brother is a mage.

(In another world, Cassandra Graves would have burned the world to stop her Father's eyes from seeing the sparks in her brother's hands.)

(In this world, she would burn her Father's world down if it meant her brother wouldn't be afraid of his own light.)

The seeress had stopped counting her years, but her little brother counted them for her. She was eighteen, young and adamant, rock wrapped tightly around her skin like an armor, like damnation, like a mantle, when she sat in front of a young hero and smiled pleasantly at him.

"There are horrors in this world", she said, this time, because she loved her brother and her brother- "I know the story of a redhead little hero and a girl with a spear. I can help you."

George had looked at her (assessment, a younger voice said in Jack's head, data gathering) and the seeress had held her head high. "Why?"

"The seeress loves her brother", she said calmly, the words worn out and familiar in her tongue. "Her brother is a mage."

Jack Farris had been fourteen when he had given his name to a monster because it had been asked. The seeress knew how to hide everything but the stone on her skin and the glowing gold in other people's hands from her father's watchful eye, had learned how to hide the tremor in her voice, but she was young, too, and she didn't know how to fear children instead of fearing for them. She would never really learn that in this world, not with Jack Farris' fiery golden luck and George's boar spear and name tucked safely in her tools belt. 

Spider was more hers in this world than in any other. They spread maps of the outposts, of the keep, of the mountains on oak tables and tried to justify to themselves letting dozens of children die to save one- to destroy this. They never quite managed. All her life, Cassandra would know she was the nightmare of the mountains. For all of his life Spider would feel hell on his heels.

Her father didn't trust the seeress with all that he had, but he loved his son (his son is not a mage). Cassandra had tried to keep Sam away from all of this. His gangly hands should only be stained with ink. But Sam had always been a stubborn little thing ever since he was a baby, and he pressed his hand against the glow of the Elsewhere. "If it is to be your life's work", he said, "let me help. I know things. Dad trusts me. We can do this better together."

Sam Graves didn't run away in this world. He already knew both of Jack's smiles, in the few times the seeress had had something to do at the same time Spider did and hadn't trusted anyone else to look over her little brother. The Giantkiller had been in Grey's nightmares, in one world- here, he had been just one more person to hold him after a nightmare and tell him he was scarier than anything out there.

"And if I'm not", Jack added, grinning at the boy curled up against him, "you can sure bet George is."

George, pretending to sleep propped against a wall, smiled.

"Do you want to know about the history of potatoes in the valleys?", she called out. Sam always meant it as a distraction, when he said things like that, but George was the same anywhere and not the kind of person who changed depending on who was listening. In any world, Sam wouldn't refuse knowledge. He let them soothe him, these two heroes with bloodied hands taking care of the little brother of who should have been their enemy, and he fell asleep again with Jack's hand on his hair and George's calm voice in his ears.

Liam the Pied Piper would be rescued by these two in this world too, door already unlocked, and in this too there would be something heartbreaking about the realization- they are just kids. It would define the rest of his life. In another world, it would have defined his death, but in this one they had a mage- a sage- for whom the Elsewhere was always a sigh away, a kid too, but one that liked to pour golden light into their jackets and trace protection spells on their skin. Sam Graves would always grow up protected. He learned how to want to protect others much earlier in this world.

Sam poured in them every protection he read about, some that he invented, some that Liam had told him about in the same tone he reserved for telling little kids about storms, and hoped that it was enough. "You may be scarier than anything out there", he said, "but I'm stronger."

Jack would have never told anyone not to be a hero, never have told him not to risk himself if that was what he felt was right, and this redhead was-to-be giant ruffled his hair and smiled in a way that was far from patronizing. 

His father loved his son. His son was not a mage. But Sam collected knowledge, collected facts, and his father had been overjoyed that he wanted to know more about their trade. The seeress waited at the door and didn't shake with envy she didn't have or concern that she had. Sam would smile at their dad, hands stained with grease instead of ink, walk with his sister to his room, and promptly throw up with her soothing hand rubbing circles on his back.

"The seeress loves her brother", she whispered to him. That had been the best way to comfort him for years. It still was when there were no heroes in sight. "Cassandra Graves loves her brother."

"Sandry", he had said. "I need you to take me to George."

He still held her hand tight as soon as they were out of the town. She held his, and inhaled.

Sam absentminded poured gold in the wards of the bakery, strengthened and straightened the protection spells on Jack, George and Liam's clothes with a few pats on their backs, let Bea give him a pocket pie and ate it while changing the position of some silver pins on the map she had. He explained what his father had told him with the same voice he used for talking about coastal geology.

"I think you can do it", he told them, and the seeress felt her heart of magma soar, because his hands were taking gold out of the air as easy as breathing and he didn't flinch, didn't hide. Sam Graves was careful. He wasn't afraid.

How could he hate the same golden light the Pied Piper could whistle out of the air, that he could feel settled on the Giantkiller's shoulders like a cape, that was breathed by dragons that had spoken to George and called her a Shield?

Grey would still be a sage here. He didn't hate or fear magic, but he loved knowledge. It would still be a little easier to breathe.

The seeress didn't want her brother in the middle of the fight, not when he was barely a teenager, but he looked at her and said "if this is to be your life's work-"

"Let me do this, Sandry."

Sam Graves didn't run away. When he was fourteen, he brought down his father's life work with golden flames that loved him better than his father ever had. Jack watched his back, and in this world as in any other Grey answered when he called out. He was fourteen, but Jack had been fourteen, too, when he had become a hero. Grey didn't want to be one, but it was hard to get out when you are already in.

"I'm going to the Academy", he had said, as soon as it was done and her sister had started to pick the city up and put it back together.

"As a mage?", Jack said.

"A sage."

Jack looked at him. He remembered the tree house he had grown up in, remembered- some people build and some people destroy. It's not right or wrong. It's life and death. Jack Farris could understand someone who wanted more than what life had gave them. (Jack had been born and raised a small, short boy. Beansprout. He would still grow, and grow tall.)

Jack looked at this boy he had soothed and held after nightmares, this boy who had poured protection spells on him as if he were just straightening his collar, who had answered when he called out, and made a decision. "Do you have space for one more?"

Cassandra didn't like it. George and Liam didn't like it. But the mountains were safer now, and there were so many things for a young mayor to do. A few weeks before it was time to go, Grey chose his name.

"It wouldn't do for people to make the connection between me and the boy who they say brought golden hellfire on the slavers", he had said. "Sandry."

"Sanders Grey", her sister had said, and held him close.

Cassandra Graves loved her brother. Her brother was a mage, and a sage, and a hero. He would grow up, but, unlike Jack, he would never be tall. Grey would for the rest of his life pour power into the wards in the walls of places he liked, would always trace protection spells on the skin of his friends, but he would also learn about-

"Everything. I want to know everything", and there was no right way to do it, but there were a few good ways, too.

He saw a Jones in the hallways and quietly, carefully composed a letter with Jack that got sent to the mountains. "Missed us?", their redhead would joke, barely a week later, and look away to give the siblings privacy.

Laney was brave, and meticulous, and strong. She was not kind. That was okay- Sandry hadn't been kind, either, not to anyone who wasn't him, and there was kindness enough in Liam's beaming smile for the both of them. She was scarier than anything out there, but so was Grey.

They went out to hunt here too, because Jack wasn't weighted down by grief and guilt and they were heroes, each one of them. Laney would quickly earn that name with each precise shot, each carefully crafted spell. Grey didn't insist on calling her Miss Jones. There had been a Jones in his life for years by then, and he wouldn't have liked someone calling him Mr. Graves.

There was no way someone could have gotten through the wards at Sally-Anne's place after the one time Liam had taken him there, but Rupert still found them, or maybe they found each other. He and Grey bonded over trying to keep these reckless heroes alive, golden fire and helms. Rupert politely thanked him for the protection spells and then pressed food in his hands. Grey guessed that was fair.

And then, one day, he quietly talked to a shy boy Leaf had named Red, read the true answers in his silences. Grey remembered the lack of official help in the mountains. He was good by now at seeing corruption and greed covered by idealism.

Grey Sanders looked at the Bureau, quietly started to craft protection with ink-stained fingers, and said, "I think we have a new thing to burn down."


End file.
